


You'll Have To Hear I Love You.

by demonsonthemoon



Series: Oh Calamity [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Depiction of Depression, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-16
Updated: 2016-10-16
Packaged: 2018-08-22 18:39:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8296021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demonsonthemoon/pseuds/demonsonthemoon
Summary: “I love you,” Jean whispers as Grantaire slowly opens his eyes beside him.
“I love you,” Jean states loudly.
“I love you.” Jean types at the end of his text message.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written in 2014, but I just realised I never uploaded it to AO3. Oops.

_~ Mais je crains que pour tout ça…  
Tu doives entendre “Je t'aime”._ ~ Les Chansons d'Amour, “J'ai Cru Entendre”.

_~ But I fear that for all that…  
You’ll have to hear “I love you”. ~_

They say things that are repeated enough times become true.  
Jean Prouvaire thinks that the opposite is real too.  
If a truth isn’t repeated enough, it slowly starts to fade away, to lose its meaning, to cease to exist.  
Words left unsaid can have no effect, they serve no purpose, they are only used, empty thoughts.  
  
“I love you,” Jean whispers as Grantaire slowly opens his eyes beside him. The sky is grey outside the window, grey and crying a delicate melody on the roof of Grantaire’s apartment building. How Jean wishes it would sing a sunny ballad instead. Now is no time for nostalgia, not as Grantaire turns his head to the side, away from him. Jean doesn’t say anything else. He places a kiss at the junction of his partner’s shoulder and neck, then slowly gets up.  
  
Jean Prouvaire loves a lot. He loves often, quickly. He loves passionately.  
In that, he and Grantaire are very alike. They are also different. While Jean loves things that make him smile, loves the beauty of small gestures and pastel colors, Grantaire loves in a destructive way. He loves to watch fire consume beauty, loves grandeur in the guilty way that Daedalus looks at the sun to remind himself of the son he cannot touch anymore. Grantaire’s love is devouring. Devouring others, but himself also.  
  
“I love you,” Jean states loudly. Grantaire shakes his head and tells the poet to leave him alone. There is a pause during which Jean holds his gaze, his hazelnut eyes begging him to change his mind.  
“Get out!” Grantaire nearly shouts.  
Jean closes the door loudly, then sits down against it. It’s not the first time that this has happened. He still isn’t used to the hardness of the tiles under him. Nonetheless, he takes off his shoes and socks, and presses the naked soles of his feet on the cold floor. He stays there until his toes are numb, breathing calmly, but loudly enough that Grantaire can hear him. If he’s listening on the other side.  
  
“You cannot fix me,” Grantaire had said, a few minutes after their first kiss. He had been crying, alone in the one-room apartment he was renting while in college. He had been crying, and the door had been open, and Jean had in and talked to him and asked if he could kiss him. And he had said yes, because the taste of tears had been overwhelming and Jean’s lips tasted of peach lip balm. “You cannot fix me, and I’ll screw up your life like I screwed up mine, and you’ll hate me.” Jean had smiled and softly pressed his lips to Grantaire’s once more. He had pulled away after only a second, sitting himself more comfortably next to Grantaire, on the floor and his back against the wall.  
“I cannot fix you. I don’t want to,” he had whispered, head on his friend’s shoulder. “but together, maybe, we can fill your cracks with gold dust.”  
  
“I love you.” Jean types at the end of his text message. He puts his phone back in the pocket of his jeans, trying to fit his hand in it too to protect himself from the cold. Dark clouds tower over the city like discarded ashes of a long-out angelic bonfire. He walks quickly, even though the prospect of reaching a lonely apartment is only slightly better than staying in the cold.  
  
“This isn’t even my worst state, Jehan,” Grantaire had said, with tired eyes and a breath that smelled of alcohol. “I’m gonna get better, or I’m gonna get worse. There’s nothing you can do about it. There’s nothing I can do about it. There’s nothing…”  
“I can try,” had replied his newly found partner, interrupting him.  
“But for how long?”  
  
“I love you,” Jean hears, in the way Grantaire stands in front of the door, silent and red-eyed.  
“I love you,” he replies, in the way he take the other man’s hand and presses it to his lips, leading him to his couch.  
“I love you,” he whispers, in the way he pushes a strand of dark hair out of Grantaire’s eyes and kisses him softly.  
“I’m sorry,” Grantaire says, and Jean hears “I love you” again, in the way his partner’s hand trembles inside his. It has been a rough few days. A rough few weeks. A rough few months, or maybe just a rough life, if they are both honest. But at the end of it, Jehan will always say:  
“I love you.”  
“You shouldn’t.”  
“But I do.”  
  
Grantaire laughs. A cold, sharp and empty sound. The silence stretches around it, between them, like it has so many times before.  
“Love me less,” whispers Grantaire into Jehan’s neck. “but love me a long time.”  
“Always.” Jean replies. And he repeats it. Again, and again.  
And again.  
And Grantaire smiles.


End file.
